Swede Science Olympians finish second

Once the dust cleared from scientific experiments, experimental designs and other challenges, Swede science students won silver for their efforts.

Gothenburg High School students competed in all 12 events offered at the regional Science Olympiad competition at the University of Nebraska at Kearney on March 19.

Fifteen teams from across the region in the high school division participated in the annual event.

Science Olympiad sponsor and biology teacher Maggie Tiller described the events as all different.

Three events involved building something in advance that was tested at the competition and included a gravity vehicle, boomilever and elastic launched glider.

The Swedes took first in both boomilever, put together by Trenton Long and Preston Franzen, and elastic launched glider, created by Rachel Rice and Jessica Schmidt.

Tiller said the boomilever was tested to see how much mass it would hold.

“Ours happened to be fairly light and held a good amount of mass,” she said. “And the glider was scored for how long it could stay in flight.”

Cody Cooper and Kyann LeViner also won gold in forestry.

Some of the events students rotated through to complete certain tasks such as forestry (identifying different trees), rocks and minerals (identifying these items), experimental design (students were given supplies and had to design an experiment), Write It/Do It (one student wrote directions to recreate a structure and the other student followed directions to complete the structure).

Other events were test based and included anatomy and physiology, fermi questions (estimations on crazy things such as how many drops of water are found in Lake Eric).

Yet other events required students to apply knowledge to solve a problem or answer question in disease detectives, chemistry and forensics.

Tiller said the students always have a good experience at Science Olympiads and like to watch other events so that they can get ideas for the next year.

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